


heretics

by ambassador319



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: Avatrice, F/F, my homosexual agenda for season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25242124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambassador319/pseuds/ambassador319
Summary: After the battle with Adriel, Beatrice runs away with Ava. It's both better and worse than she thinks.(or: three times Beatrice wants to kill Ava, and one time she wants to kiss her)
Relationships: Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva
Comments: 58
Kudos: 853





	heretics

**Psalm 35:1-28**

_Take hold of shield and buckler and rise for my help! Draw the spear and javelin against my pursuers! Say to my soul, “I am your salvation!”_

She is _so_ going to hell, God help her, for the things she’s about to do to one Ava Silva. 

"We are not breaking into the Sistine Chapel, Ava!" 

"Really, cause it looks like that's exactly what we're doing!"

Ava disappears round the corner and Beatrice grits her teeth, forcing herself to run faster. At the far end of the corridor a Wraith demon lets out a pitching scream. If there weren't something like a thousand possessed civilians on their tail, she would have turned and faced it: she _would:_ but at this point all bets are off, and they're staking out the site of the Papal Conclave itself. Without a single one of their Sisters behind them. 

She skids on marble and spots Ava, a black figure ascending a white staircase. Taking the steps two by two, Beatrice follows, sign after NO RUNNING sign flickering by in licks of bright green like traffic lights or road signals, meaning, go, go, _go._ Her breath sears in her lungs. Something roars from down on the landing. 

"Beatrice!" Ava shouts. Somehow she's swung the grand doors open - phasing, another superpower, or just a stroke of luck - Beatrice doesn't care. She flies through. The Halo Bearer slams them shut after her, wood sputtering splinters at the force of the movement. 

The space inside is wide and empty. She doubles over, clutching for breath. 

"How long?" Ava shoves the bolt down. "How long 'till they get here?"

"I'd give it about-" and something slams into the doors, "Two seconds."

The bolt shudders. Beatrice retreats and Ava with her, unsheathing the Cruciform Sword, the Sistine Chapel yawning at their backs and Hell rattling at the door. 

"We fight," Beatrice says, lowering into the proper stance, "As soon as they enter. You take the left, I'll-"

Ava grabs her with her free arm. "Beatrice, we can't!"

"We can!" She rips free. 

"Adriel's _dead,_ " Ava reminds, frantically, “He isn't leading them. We gotta get out of here-"

"We have to _fight!_ For our Sisters!" They’d pulled Mary from the fray after her _in this life_ speech, Lilith hauling her up against a column and turning with bared teeth, and Ava had dashed forward and... after that, it was all a blur. Ava is still wild with the blood-fury, Beatrice can feel it, crackling and blue molten-hot as the pulsing of the Cruciform Sword in the other girl's hand. Had she killed Adriel? They thought so. She'd run him through. But then his soul had wrenched from form and winged through the air. And his army was still after them. 

And they'd been split up. All of them.

"We'll find them!" 

"Not in this life!" Beatrice yells, tears pricking at her eyes. "You're not- we _ran_ -"

The grand doors quake with an almighty _thud._ Red mist begins to snake through the cracks, horrible, relentless, with a hiss like embers grating through sand. Another _thud._ All up and around and above them, the paintings and tapestries of the Sistine quiver, colours shaken out and wrung by the impact, and Beatrice feels like Pandora with her hand on the box. Driven by a fate beyond her control to release into the world all manner of unspeakable evils.

Ava claps a hand to her shoulder. "There's a window- up there, if we could just-"

Beatrice rounds on her. "It's all the same with you, isn't it? Flight, no fight!"

"That's not fair-"

"We are _staying!"_

"No we're _not!"_ The doors thunder again. Ten seconds left, tops. Ava gets up in her space. "Listen," she says, "They're my family too, okay?"

Beatrice meets her glare for glare. 

"I hate it as much as you, but we have to go. We can regroup. Emergency point by Trajan's Column, right?"

“Vendôme," Beatrice corrects. 

"Vendôme," Ava vows. The grand doors buckle, and burst open. 

—

**Psalm 41:1-13**

_To the choirmaster. In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him; the Lord protects him and keeps him alive; he is called blessed in the land; you do not give him up to the will of his enemies._

The escape from the Vatican was a near thing, costing Beatrice more than the one bloody scrape and Ava, one of her fingers. (Grew back with the Halo: but still.)

They stick to the edge of the Papal Mass, skirting St. Peter's Square. The crowd is flustered and grumbling. As she hurries under the obelisk, Beatrice closes her eyes and crosses her chest. Ava gives her a weird look - but Ava is an athiest. Beatrice has lost her habit, even her close-cropped battle habit that's nigh and near impossible to lose, and _Lord, give her strength,_ she feels further from God than she ever has on this Holy Sunday. 

The demons don't follow. Beatrice and Ava duck into alleys, side streets, to avoid people gawking at their clothing. Half-nun half-mythical-warrior can’t exactly pass for cosplay. Not on Papal Sunday; it’s more like sacrilege, actually. But the night lets them through and pass - little heretics they are - bloodstained and grime-smeared, weapons tucked close, eyes whetted too-sharp. The night is Limbo. It offers no judgement.

And the night in Rome is thunderous. A pillaging night. A night loud, clattering with life unseen, life done and delivered, and every pillar and arch they cross beneath is monstrous and warped into devious form. Streetlight is few and far between. Restaurants glitter from rooflines. Ava looks so at home here; putting aside the glint of the chainmail, her silhouette moves with grudging grace, all careless and fleeting and modern, completely anonymous. Beatrice feels exactly the opposite. Windchill bites at her neck, dragging cool fingernails through her newly-exposed hair.

They reach Place Vendôme with the first grey shade of dawn. The plaza is empty. Echoing. A breeze sifts across cobblestones, flicking at tissues and cigarettes buried in the cracks. 

"We set the emergency meeting for Tuesday morning," Beatrice murmurs. 

"That's way too far away," Ava complains. Back to the childishness then. As per usual.

They stand there a moment. 

Somewhere, far across the empty plaza and waving tissues and cigarettes crumpled in trails down the alleys, someone is singing. The sound reaches. It is a reaching sound; a frail, wispy, glowing sound. Might be two voices. More than two. Where there is singing, the wind does not seem to blow.

More out of instinct than conscious decision, Beatrice turns on her heel. Ava follows. No questions asked. It probably shouldn't feel as good as it does, the faith she holds in her - truly. Beatrice doesn't want it to feel good. 

The singing grows in volume as they wander round the corner. Santa Maria Basilica looms out of the gloom, proud and towering. Light spills out onto cobble. The hushed implication of a choir inside pulls at Beatrice, smoothing down her clothes, soothing her weariness.

Stepping closer, the chorus-sung Latin begins to take shape. _Pulchra es amica mea...suavis et decora filia Ierusalem..._ The lyrics change shape in her mind, rolling over and translating. _Beautiful you are, my love...as Jerusalem._

The steps are cracked and wide. She takes the side door, slipped open as if by an absent wind. A repetition: _pulchra es amica mea..._

Through soft-lit hallways, the transept and the guard of the arch, past unspooling mosaics, Beatrice follows the singing. Ava follows her.

They come to a stop just past the entranceway of the inner hall, where the glint of lit braziers and gold coffered ceiling does not reach. On the raised dais, a choir sings, lanky and solemn-faced in robes of white and grey. Some audience is speckled among the pews: though not many. Save the conductor, everyone's eyes are closed. 

"What-" Ava begins. Beatrice shushes her. She tugs her behind a column. 

"A dawn service," she explains. "It'll go on for hours. We can rest here.”

Ava's face clears with understanding. In this light, the dark under her eyes is visible, and the blood stands out where it is patched and fragmented along her armour. Her hair is fraying from its updo and grit streaks her cheek, forehead, from when they'd set off the dynamite and brought down the Tomb, or when she'd been thrown to the floor, tossed by a guard or demon, or even where Adriel had touched her. She looks every bit the battle-weary Warrior the Sisters had pushed her to become. Something twists in Beatrice's stomach. She thinks it's pride: or else apology. 

The choir goes on singing. _Terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata..._ and terrible as an army ready for combat...

They edge around the back of the church. Column after Athenian column pass in all towering glory before they find a spot, solidly entrenched in shadow, apart from the walkway and the pews and somewhere else entirely, somewhere impossible. Beatrice slides down the wall, Ava following suit. Her muscles hurt. Her head hurts. Everything hurts. Beatrice focuses on her knees. Uniform black; tucked to her chest; raggedy through the OCS skirt. She times her breathing. 

In, out. In. Out. 

"You're into choir, huh?" Ava whispers. 

"Yes. I was raised with this music."

"Cool," she says. "Cool. I could never get into it, honestly."

Beatrice looks at her sideways. "Could you now?"

"Mhmm. I dunno. I think it's an... _a-choired_ taste."

Beatrice splutters. Ava chuckles, so hard and breathlessly that Beatrice considers slapping a hand across her mouth, before she thumps her head back against stone. She’s looking toward the ceiling where the cathedral braziers dip and sway from chains, flicker-bright, yellow as suns, and beyond that the redder, ever-burning sanctuary lamp, and all that light in her eye catches, and suddenly she looks on the verge of laughter and some fervent, dawning wonder at the same time.

 _Averte oculos tuos a me..._ the choir sings. Remove your eyes from me. _Quia ipsi me avolare fecerunt..._ because they subjugate me. Beatrice refocuses quickly on her knees. 

Ava’s knee kicks against hers. 

“Brat,” Beatrice mutters. 

There’s a snort of a laugh at her side. Another kick. Beatrice kicks her back. 

“Ooh, Bea’s got some _bite_ ,” Ava murmurs, in that drawlingly indignant tone that should _not_ be allowed to sound that good on _anyone._ Beatrice elbows her. Harder than she means to, probably. Ava wheezes and falls back, and-

” _Girls_ ,” a voice hisses, startlingly close, “No violence! This is a church!” 

The woman is by and past on her way to the back pews before either of them can react. Horrified, Beatrice looks at Ava, who's snorting: no, full-on about to burst into laughter, _again._ The Cruciform Sword dangles quite freely from her right shoulder. 

"Yeah, Bea, no violence," Ava reprimands.

It takes a supreme amount of effort, but Beatrice refrains from committing her battle-partner right there and then. She raises her eyebrows until Ava is sitting upright again, wriggling her back into the wall, that shit-eating grin still in place. Her shoulder nudges Beatrice's. Beatrice nudges back. It's more like an open-your-mouth-again-and-die nudge than an I-can't-stop-helplessly-flirting-with-you nudge, she thinks. She hopes. 

"Be quiet," Beatrice tells her, " _Listen._ " 

A beat. The choir goes on singing. Just as Beatrice prepares to be attacked again, be it by pun or physically, Ava huffs, and turns, and presses her forehead to Beatrice's shoulder. She fits all too nicely into Beatrice's neck. Jostling, settling, she relaxes against her. 

“I’m so tired, Bea,” Ava mumbles. “You do the listening for me, k?”

The dawn begins to filter in through stained windows. Beatrice watches, and listens. Ava falls asleep. 

—

**Jeremiah 6:14-8:19**

_Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls._

The next day passes in a haze. They leave the church mid-morning, with the vacation of the dawn choir, and try to call Mary. And Camila. And Lilith. Nobody answers. Ava asks if they should hang round the Place all day. Beatrice responds, no, they don't need to, the allotted meeting time is the following morning. Enough time to escape. To lick wounds. To travel. 

The Vatican is all over the news and plays in train stations, bus stops, storefronts. Where they don't see the aftermath of Adriel they see Duretti: _Pope_ Duretti, bathed in blinding light on his paper posters, extending a hand to the masses. They are not like him. Wherever they go, they try to remind themselves: they are not like him.

They don't talk about Adriel. They don't talk about demons. Ava sheathes the Holy Sword and fixes it to her leg, not on-hand, but within arm’s reach.

Beatrice digs out cash saved in a coat pocket. They find a thrift store - however thrift you can get in Rome, Italy - and exchange a mismatch of OCS and OCS rebel gear for a rucksack of backpacker gear. Shirts, trousers. Hats. The two of them look like brainless American tourists, but, well, it's better than looking like warrior nuns. They discard the confidentially-branded OCS clothing in a trashcan at the end of a long alley. 

They don't call Jillian. 

"Maybe they went to ARQTECH," Ava says. "The others. I mean, I did."

"You did because you're an idiot," Beatrice replies. She likes how she sounds, now, removed from the panic of last night. She sounds composed and certain. Her thoughts are bundled once more into packages, transferring to her along two straight-laced train tracks. "They wouldn't go to her."

"Hey!'

"Fine. Maybe it was a well-intentioned - if not misguided - decision. Happy?"

"You betcha, Bea."

Well... her thoughts are in order, _mostly._ They tend to derail a little bit whenever Ava uses that one nickname she somehow picked up for Beatrice in the last twenty-four hours.

Later in the afternoon, the two of them sit, legs dangling over the edge of the Forum, gazing unto the clipped grasses and the very still stillness of centuries-old brick and mortar. Ava leans forward into the wind. The sun brushes bright on her eyelashes; it catches on the glittery laces of those idiotic kids' sneakers she insisted on purchasing. Beatrice hates this whole basking-in-the-sunlight thing. The wasting-time, nowhere-to-be thing. Doing nothing is probably against her nature; but here, now, Ava looks the opposite: she’s the personification of that note she left the first time she escaped from Cat's Cradle. I WANT TO LIVE.

”Ever been here before?” Ava asks. 

Beatrice frowns into sunshine. “No. Swiss boarding school didn’t give much thought to travelling.” 

“Did the Church?”

“Hah. No. Absolutely not.”

“Do you... regret it? Joining them?”

”I’m devoted to God,” Beatrice snaps. A reflex. “You mean, giving up my-“

”Life,” Ava finishes. 

“No.”

Far below, a school group scatters among the ruins. They are all wearing obnoxious blue and orange raincoats and look like heathens wandered into Sunday service. Beatrice watches them as they kick at funerary inscriptions, pose and take selfies with headstones. Her throat tightens.

"What's it like for you?” Ava shifts on the stone. “Being so...selfless, all the time?"

Beatrice wrenches her eyes from the kids in the Forum below. She meets Ava’s own.

"Selflessness isn't something you choose,” she says. She feels old. She feels older than her nineteen years, older than Ava. Older than anyone else in this entire city. “It's just realising not everything is to do with you."

Ava is silent for a while after that.

The sun crawls by overhead. The school group hurries away. Beatrice is about to stand and suggest they find a hotel already, but Ava beats her to rising. She stands and brushes off her pants, offering a hand to Beatrice.

"We're gonna do something," she says, “And you’re not gonna question it. You'll just do it."

"Presumptuous much?" 

Ava grins. "Always am. Come on. Up, up."

They walk. Beatrice follows Ava through buildings and between crumbling aqueducts and all the lurid orange wallflowers, until they arrive at a sudden emptiness - no towers, no churches, not even powerlines. The sky arcs over the street. On the other side of the road a bare stretch of grass dips, valley-like.

A ditch. It's a ditch. Ava has led her to a massive, road-spanning, unidentifiable ditch. 

"Ava-" Beatrice begins, but Ava interrupts. 

"The _Circus Maximus,"_ she names. "I used to watch documentaries about this place as a kid, all the time, you know, _Gladiator_ and shit. They used to race chariots here." She runs a hand through her hair. "Never thought I'd get to see it in the flesh."

"Wonderful. May I ask - why are we here?"

"I want you to race me."

She’s got to be kidding. "And if I say no?"

"Oh, come on! Please? Pretty please?"

Ava bounces on her heels, the grasses waving behind her in a kind of benediction. Beatrice sighs and massages her forehead. Her hands are clean of gloves. She can feel the press of her own warmth, right up against her knuckles, ringed about her head in a perfect circle.

There is no way she's doing this. 

She's doing this. Welcome to Beatrice’s life: all wind-drenched, weed-soaked three hundred metres of it. She's kneeling in the dirt at the crux of an ancient racetrack, her boots untied and stacked some distance away in a drift of nettles, with Ava’s. Black Mary Janes next to glittering all-American-kid sneakers.

Underfoot, the soil is dry and gritty. Beatrice doesn't remember the last time she went barefoot - well, aside from training. She’s not sure she likes it. To her left, Ava paces back-and-forth, performing ridiculous jumping jacks and touching her toes with her fingertips (or, trying to). She drops to an Olympic kneel. But... well, it’s really it's more of a sprawl, and she hangs her head and glances at Beatrice upside-down through her knees, and smiles. Doofus. Literal dope. Beatrice doesn't know why she's here. 

"On your mark," Ava calls. "Three- two-"

In her chest there arises a curious buzz. A buzzing. World-opening, world-narrowing, like fear: except it isn't fear. Beatrice lifts her chin. 

"One!"

They lunge together, two girls leaping from the get-go line, not warriors, not Sisters, just _girls._ The ground pounds underfoot. The sky shakes loose overhead. Beatrice's blood hums in her ears and blazes in her chest, and she tastes its bitterness in her mouth. This is the feeling that trips her up in mock-battles, where it's all skill, no misstep - this is the feeling she pushes and punches out of herself in the training ring - this rush. This crescendoing madness. 

The street passes and so does the blur of the beaten track, and Ava looks over her shoulder, and picks up speed. Beatrice feels this _tug._ She runs to meet it. 

Ten seconds, twenty, and Beatrice manages to pass Ava - and keeps going, habit-less, sister-less, godless, flying high on adrenaline and on her own two feet. A _whoop_ behind her! She doesn’t answer but opens her mouth, letting the wind flood in, and her heart rasp out from under her tongue. Her heart thunders through her entire body. It might be the only noise in the world.

She runs and runs and all of her sins flood out of her at shutter speed, and she isn’t thinking of anything; she runs until their agreed-upon finish line draws near, over by the rise of the hill. Five steps, four steps, three, two...

A body barrels into her.

 _”Bitch!”_ Beatrice explodes. Ava shrieks back in rage or triumph as they tumble to the ground. In any other circumstance, Beatrice would tuck-and-roll and come up on her feet, but in this circumstance there’s a dead collapsing weight on her back, and she hits hard, the air knocking out of her in a _whoomf_. She catches an elbow to the ribs; hears the cackling of Ava’s laughter.

"You _swore_ ," she taunts.

Oh, Beatrice could _kill_ her.

"That's cheating, I would have won!”

Her ribs hurt. Her hip hurts where it slammed into the ground. She shoves around and comes all of a sudden face-to-face with Ava, nearly knocking foreheads, the two of them a mess of sweat and tangled impact. Ava is laughing hard enough to cry. She’s fallen near directly on top of Beatrice; her stomach heaves against hers. And inside of Beatrice surges a Noah’s flood of feeling. Anger. Pain. Something else. All of it wants-

"Sorry not sorry,” Ava mocks, sliding off of her. " _Bitch._ That's gold."

They lay side by side and stare up at the sun, the bright, heavy-handed heat of the day, as their bodies catch up to them. Beatrice struggles to rein her breathing. Ava lays a hand over her stomach, but that’s all: she lays there flushed and panting, letting it out, letting it stay. Beatrice counts in her head. _In for four. Hold. Shoot, hold. Out for four._

When the rush subsides, she sits up - 

Or tries to. Ava flings out and grabs her.

”Wait.” Her fingers curl around Beatrice‘s wrist. “Just wait a second.”

Slowly, Beatrice lowers herself back down. The sky teeters up to meet her. When her head is in the grass again, it’s all she can see.

”Why-“

“Shh. Just listen.”

Fine. She can do that. There’s the summer crickets. A pull of breeze through grass. Traffic. An arrowing swoop of cars. Beatrice doesn’t get it. She closes her eyes. Is there something holy here? Some otherworldly spirit Ava wants her to feel?

The wind. The grass. The traffic. The cars.

Oh: but. There’s something else. It's her blood in her ears; it's her breathing. The _boom, ba boom_ of her heart in her chest. 

"My first day resurrected,” Ava confesses, “I didn't know what to do. I just...ran. It was nightttime. By the ocean."

She hasn’t released her wrist yet. Beatrice flexes her hand experimentally. Ava’s fingers hold, just so, thumb drifting over the hollow and the bone. Close to the pulse.

"But that's all I had to do. I just had to run. And it was like, it was just like, everything made sense."

A movement at her side. Beatrice opens her eyes. Ava is looking right at her. And in the earth beneath, Beatrice can feel her own heartbeat thumping, deep and loud as an earthquake: it hits, rebounds, coming back to her right between her shoulder blades. 

"You deserve that," Ava tells her. "You deserve to be selfish for once."

—

**John 13:34-35**

_A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another._

A noise wakes her halfway through the night. She can't make it out and, bleary, slumps down again. It's cold. Too cold. All she can see is the Halo, smudging faintly through the dark. 

The cold bites. The Halo glows. Her hair itches at her shoulders where she's let it down to sleep. The cold bites, _again._

On pure, dumb, sleep-addled instinct, Beatrice blinks and shuffles forward. Shannon would always let the younger Sisters close to the Halo - would let them hug her round the waist on chill mornings, or sling an arm over her shoulder after a particularly gruelling training - and take the strength they needed. It hurts to think about Shannon. Beatrice presses her forehead into the Halo and closes her eyes. 

There’s that familiar warmth. Beginning as a trickle and swelling to a flood, the holy energy flows into her, a calm and pressing force like the hands of the summer sun. Beatrice sighs and lets her tightly twisted blankets slip. Her muscles uncurl. With the shadow of God burning beneath her eyelids, she nudges closer. Her nose brushes against fabric - 

"Bea?" a voice croaks. 

"Not now," she grumbles. Then her eyes snap open. 

The Halo wrenches away as Ava rolls over. She meets her eye. And Beatrice has _never,_ ever wanted more to die. 

"Did you just-"

"No."

"You did."

"Did not."

"Never pegged you for a cuddler," Ava quips, her hair messed up and crazy - and that's about all Beatrice can see of her because the Halo on her back is glowing, so brightly that all the patterns of cruddy sagging plaster are picked out on the opposite wall. God save her from cheap hotels two blocks from the Vendome. Oh, and God save her from cheap hotels with _only one bed._

Beatrice turns back around. “ _Not_ talking about this,” she swears. “Ever. "

"Gotcha." 

"I mean it."

" _I mean it,_ " Ava parrots from behind her, all high-pitched and gleeful. Beatrice has woken the devil. She's actually woken the devil. This is her penance, this is her punishment, and her divine retribution is - a hand on her back? Ava's giggles subside. "Your hair's nice.”

"Thank you?"

Ava's hand has only come to rest, a gesture like a comma in a sentence. Beatrice feels her there, hesitating.

"I mean, it looks nice down," Ava stammers, "Is that offensive? The habit is cool too- I, uh-"

"It's okay."

The dark that Beatrice looks into seems to look back. It’s daring her to do something reckless. _Yours does, too,_ she could answer.

Quickly changing tack, she asks, "Are you always this chatty in the middle of the night?"

"Only if you're lucky."

"Oh, I'm so fortunate."

"Very. You know, _you_ woke me up."

"I was sleepwalking," Beatrice says curtly. Ava laughs and her fingers shudder a little bit, and - Beatrice's stomach lurches - as Ava winds a lock around her finger, the tug quite careful and faint against Beatrice's scalp, more thoughtful than anything. Were it anyone else they'd be in a three-point chokehold by now. _Why_ isn't Beatrice putting her in a three-point chokehold?

"You know," Ava muses, "A sleepwalking nun? I think that's what the kids call... a roamin’ Catholic."

Beatrice is _seriously_ considering putting her in a three-point chokehold. 

"Shut up," she splutters. She can almost feel Ava's laughter. "Stop. That was horrible." On her back, Ava pulls away and then brushes up, lightly, oh-so-lightly, half not-even-there. 

"You know what's more horrible? How do you know when it's time for cows to go to sleep?"

"I don't want to hear it."

'When it's pasture bedtime," she says, smugly. Beatrice feels her touch the back of her head. 

"Disgusting. I'm assuming you have another."

"Dreaming in colour is a pigment of your imagination."

"Are these _all_ to do with sleep?"

"Yeah," Ava says, her fingers trailing into Beatrice's hair now, tracing a thin line of fire over loops and stiff kinks, “And I haven't even gotten to the best one. You wanna hear it?"

"Not really,' Beatrice murmurs. 

"Fish sleep in a river bed."

" _No,_ " Beatrice says, and turns over to slap her, "No, no, _no._ " Her attack phases right through Ava's cheek, who smirks triumphantly, but the knee to her stomach works - the legendary Halo Bearer curls in on herself, hacking - and Beatrice pins her down without a second thought, without knowing what she's doing, because she simply needs her to stop. Stop laughing. Stop making stupid puns. Stop making a _mess_ of Beatrice's heart.

Ava looks up at her, breathing hard. If the Halo's still glowing it's been pressed into the bedspread below: Beatrice can see her whole dumb face and all its dumb wide-eyed hugeness and her heart skips. Restarts. 

"Those," Beatrice says, leaning close, "Were _pun-believably_ bad." 

Ava stares. Then she’s being flipped, Beatrice landing on the mattress with an _oomf_ , and there's Ava, her mouth dropped and her hair tipping over one shoulder, her eyes all delighted and disbelieving, and she's so beautiful, and _so_ irritating, and Beatrice wants to do something. Specifically: that thing she almost did last week in Jillian's ARQTECH lab.

"It’s our thing now,” Ava says, with a honest-to-God reverence. "I've converted you. No take backs. Bad puns are _our_ thing.”

And Beatrice tries to look at least a little bit ashamed by that, but it's hard to when Ava collapses down on her and hugs her tightly. The lines of their bodies fit. In the pit of her throat, welling all hot and sweetly like a shout, Beatrice feels selfishness. _Selfishness._ A wrenching desire to take, take, take. It nearly takes her breath away. 

"You're something else, Bea." 

"Yes, well-" she swallows, "If trading bad puns is wrong, I don't want to be right."

"Permission to make them whenever possible?"

"Absolutely not."

Ava grins into her neck. Involuntarily, Beatrice shivers, at her lips there, against skin, where the habit usually shields her from even the touch of the wind.

"Got it," she mumbles. And then she presses a quick, fond kiss to underneath Beatrice's chin. 

And another, at the hinge of her jaw. And another on her temple. And another on her brow. And another on the ridge of her nose. 

It's like she can't stop. Beatrice forgets how to breathe, completely, when Ava pulls back and hovers over her face a moment, unreadable in the dimness - and, when Beatrice says nothing, only curls her fingers in the sleep shirt where it smoothes over Ava's shoulder blades - ducks down to her neck again, kissing her pulse, each kiss sloppier and slower than before. _How_ is this happening? _How is this happening?_ A sigh escapes from Beatrice without her realising and Ava bites, experimentally. She hisses.

"Sorry- sorry!" Ava jerks back. Beatrice's hands fall. It's a curtain ripping from a stage; a preacher falling from a dais. "I didn't- are you okay-"

Beatrice sits up. "Ava-"

"The Halo could hurt you- _fuck,_ oh my god-"

"Ava-"

"Jesus Christ- sorry-"

"Ava!"

The girl looks at her. Beatrice sees her wildness, a...red mouth shining in the gloom, and... "Are you levitating?"

She is. She totally, completely, f- _freaking_ is. Ava is sprawled back as though struck back, in _mid-air_ , the Halo's burning shadow twinkling out from behind her like wings. As Beatrice watches, a blanket slips from Ava's knee and falls, slithering down to land in a twisted heap on the bed. There are two, maybe three feet of space between Ava and the bed. 

"Oh." Ava looks down. "Sick." 

Unless she's mistaken: Beatrice just made the Halo Bearer _levitate._

"You're smiling," Ava accuses. "That's, like, one hundred percent what Mary calls a shit-eating grin, right there."

"This has happened before."

" _Please_ don't tell me this has happened before."

"With Sister Shannon. We’d see her floating through the halls after Mary used to-"

"Nope!" Ava covers her ears, still floating. "Gross! We are not talking about Mary doing-"

"Doing what?" Beatrice interrupts. It’s a taunt. It's a question. God, Beatrice would never of her own accord ask something like this, never just... upfront, like that, but it's dark, and they've defeated Adriel, and their friends will be here in the morning, and she can still feel Ava's mouth on her neck. And she's feeling reckless. And she _never_ feels reckless. 

The Halo shines in the dark. Shadows flicker and pass away. Ava is looking at her. 

"Um." It's almost frightening, how cute she is. 

Beatrice rises up. Onto her knees, slowly. She gives her the time to pull away.

Ava doesn't.

**Author's Note:**

> i want you to know my cat walked across my keyboard and nearly deleted this whole thing on the eve of posting. everyone say thank you to my cat for not doing that


End file.
